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Microsoft Office 2013: What to expect on the pricing front
Jan 16th
Summary: Microsoft’s Office 2013/new Office should be launching soon. Here’s what we know so far about prices and packages.
By Mary Jo Foley for All About Microsoft | January 16, 2013 — 18:33 GMT (10:33 PST)
As expected, Microsoft is pricing its next-generation Office 2013 line-up in a way to try to convince users to pay an annual subscription fee — with multiple-device-installation rights as a carrot — instead of buying the Office 2013 software outright.
Microsoft is believed to be ready to launch its next-generation Office product within the next few weeks, possibly before the end of January . The newest version of Office — known both as “the new Office” and “Office 2013″ — will be commercially available on that date. In preparation for the launch, Microsoft has been educating its reseller and integrator partners as to what to expect, pricing- and packaging-wise. More >
Stupid game lets you destroy parts of NYT story about stupid games
Apr 4th
by Steve Myers Published Apr. 4, 2012 9:57 am Updated Apr. 4, 2012 2:37 pm
The Times has figured out a great way to increase time-on-site (and destroy our productivity) by illustrating a story about our obsession with “stupid games ” with a game that lets you shoot and destroy parts of its website. Don’t like that navigation? Fire away. Find Maureen Dowd irksome? Take aim at her story on the “most popular” list. Tired of that Facebook plugin telling you what your friends are reading? It’s just a few shots from oblivion. And look at all those video-game characters just begging to be blown up! Some parts of the Web page can’t be destroyed, such as the article tools. More >
Parker, Fanning: Napster was still better than what we have now
Mar 18th
Although new services like Spotify and Rdio offer users the ability to legally listen to vast collections of music at no cost, Napster’s founders lament that music sharing today is still behind 1999.
LibreOffice stats: 400 total contributors, thousands of code commits every month
Feb 5th
By Ryan Paul | Published a day ago
The Document Foundation (TDF), which launched in 2010 to develop LibreOffice, has published statistics that illustrate the project’s rapid growth. Approximately 400 total developers have contributed code to the project. The number of contributors who are active each month generally ranges from 50 to over 100.LibreOffice is a community-driven fork of the OpenOffice.org (OOo) office suite. The project started after Oracle’s acquisition of Sun with the aim of offering a better governance model and a more inclusive environment than OOo. LibreOffice quickly attracted the support of the major Linux distributors and a large number of independent developers.
The statistics released today show that the LibreOffice community is healthy and diverse. Red Hat and SUSE each account for a large chunk of development, but the volunteers collectively have a higher volume of commits than any of the corporate contributors. The total number of monthly commits tends to range from 1500-3000.
Microsoft posts record quarter but says tablets have “cannibalized” netbooks
Oct 21st
Enterprise customers are flocking to Windows, Office, SQL Server but PC sales are weak
Despite weak consumer demand for PCs, Microsoft posted record first quarter revenue of $17.37 billion for the period that ended Sept. 30. This beat analysts’ reported expectations of $17.2 billion. Revenue increased 7% percent over the year-ago period. Microsoft credited the increase to enterprise demand for Office, server and development tools.
OPINION: Microsoft execs get pay raises, bonuses, and club memberships
The Microsoft Business Division reported $5.62 billion in revenue, an 8% increase from the prior year period when Microsoft launched Office 2010. Revenue from server products like Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange grew double-digits, and the Dynamics business grew 17% in the quarter. Lync revenue grew by over 25%. Plus, Office 365 has already signed as many customers as its predecessor did, Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS), said Peter Klein, chief financial officer, during the company’s earning webcast.
The Server & Tools unit posted $4.25 billion in revenue, a 10% increase over the prior year period. This unit is responsible for Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Azure, Visual Studio, System Center, embedded platforms and enterprise services. Microsoft says the unit saw its sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth that was driven by demand for SQL Server, Windows Server, System Center and Enterprise CAL Suites – the client licenses Microsoft requires for its server products.
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Despite weak consumer demand for PCs, Microsoftposted record first quarter revenue of $17.37 billion for the period that ended Sept. 30. This beat analysts’ reported expectations of $17.2 billion. Revenue increased 7% percent over the year-ago period. Microsoft credited the increase to enterprise demand for Office, server and development tools.OPINION: Microsoft execs get pay raises, bonuses, and club memberships The Microsoft Business Division reported $5.62 billion in revenue, an 8% increase from the prior year period when Microsoft launched Office 2010. Revenue from server products like Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange grew double-digits, and the Dynamics business grew 17% in the quarter. Lync revenue grew by over 25%. Plus, Office 365 has already signed as many customers as its predecessor did, Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS), said Peter Klein, chief financial officer, during the company’s earning webcast.
The Server & Tools unit posted $4.25 billion in revenue, a 10% increase over the prior year period. This unit is responsible for Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Azure, Visual Studio, System Center, embedded platforms and enterprise services. Microsoft says the unit saw its sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth that was driven by demand for SQL Server, Windows Server, System Center and Enterprise CAL Suites – the client licenses Microsoft requires for its server products.
Profits increased as well. Microsoft reported that operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $7.20 billion, $5.74 billion, and $0.68 per share. This represents increases of 1%, 6%, and 10%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period.
NEXT UP: Windows Server 8 First Looks
Xbox was another high spot. Xbox was the top-selling gaming console in the U.S. for the ninth consecutive month, Microsoft says. The Gears of War 3 game sold over three million copies in the first week, although this didn’t compare to the success of Halo Reach, which was released in the year-ago period and earned $200 million on its first day. Microsoft also took on the Roku and Boxee consoles of the world when it announced plans to roll out TV entertainment on Xbox LIVE starting this holiday season with about 40 content providers.
In all, Microsoft shipped 2.3 million Xbox 360 consoles in the quarter, compared to 2.8 million in the year-ago period. The Entertainment and Devices Division garnered $1.96 billion in revenue, a 9% increase. Interestingly, this unit is where income from royalties on its Android license agreements is credited, said Klein.
There were brown spots. The tablet has all but killed netbooks, Klein said, admitting to “some cannibalization of netbooks” when reporting the results of the Windows and Windows Live Division. Revenue was $4.87 billion, a mere 2% increase over the prior period, again, hurt by soft netbook sales. Note that Apple sold 11.1 million iPads during this period – a record for the tablet.
Analysts say that about 91.8 million PCs total were shipped in the period. Windows PC sales to enterprises grew at about 5% while sales of PCs to consumers were flat, Microsoft says. Klein believes that the company is in the “middle innings” of Windows 7 adoption in the enterprise. Windows 7 now accounts for about 50% of all Windows users, according to Statcounter. Microsoft said that Windows 7 licenses have reached 450 million since its launch.
The perennial weak spot of Microsoft’s Online Services Division remained so. The unit lost $494 million which was less money than it lost in the year-ago quarter, at $558 million. Microsoft says that Bing now owns 15% of the search market and this includes the boost it got from becoming Yahoo’s search engine. Speculation that Microsoft will still buy Yahoo never seems to die, but Steve Ballmer recently went on record saying Microsoft was “lucky” that the deal fell through in 2008.
Klein offered a little guidance, too. The first quarter has been traditionally Microsoft’s weakest and the company expects its next quarter, which maps to the holiday season, to be another exceptional one, he said.
Julie Bort is the editor of Network World’s Microsoft Subnet and Open Source Subnet communities. She writes the Microsoft Update and Source Seeker blogs. Follow Bort on Twitter @Julie188.
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Microsoft chose to directly respond to confusion surrounding its Windows 8 Secure Boot feature on Thursday.
Sep 23rd
Microsoft chose to directly respond to confusion surrounding its Windows 8 Secure Boot feature on Thursday.
Microsoft’s Windows chief, Steven Sinofsky, admitted there had been some comments recently that “synthesize scenarios that are not the case” around Microsoft’s work with UEFI. Redhat employee Matthew Garrett speculated that OEM machines that ship with copies of Windows 8 may lock out support for Linux installations. Garrett highlighted Microsoft’s new Secure Build OEM requirements for Windows 8 systems. Sinofsky rejected the claims in a blog post on Thursday and stated that Microsoft is simply taking advantage of new technologies to improve the security of Windows. “We are introducing capabilities that provide a no-compromise approach to security to customers that seek this out while at the same time full and complete control over the PC continues to be available,” said Sinofsky.
Tony Mangefeste on Microsoft’s Ecosystem team revealed that Microsoft is working closely with its OEM partners to improve the security experience of Windows. “Microsoft supports OEMs having the flexibility to decide who manages security certificates and how to allow customers to import and manage those certificates, and manage secured boot,” says Mangefeste. ”We believe it is important to support this flexibility to the OEMs and to allow our customers to decide how they want to manage their systems.” Mangefeste believes the customer is ultimately in control of their PC. “Microsoft’s philosophy is to provide customers with the best experience first, and allow them to make decisions themselves. We work with our OEM ecosystem to provide customers with this flexibility.”
Microsoft chose to highlight the flexible approach by reminding people that the Samsung tablet, with Windows 8 Developer Preview, handed out at BUILD contains the ability to disable the firmware Secure Boot feature. “OEMs are free to choose how to enable this support,” says Mangefeste. “Windows merely did work to provide great OS support for a scenario we believe many will find valuable across consumers and enterprise customers.” Microsoft summarized its work with UEFI:
- UEFI allows firmware to implement a security policy
- Secured boot is a UEFI protocol not a Windows 8 feature
- UEFI secured boot is part of Windows 8 secured boot architecture
- If desired, Windows 8 utilizes secured boot to ensure that the pre-OS environment is secure
- Secured boot doesn’t “lock out” operating system loaders, but is is a policy that allows firmware to validate authenticity of components
- OEMs have the ability to customize their firmware to meet the needs of their customers by customizing the level of certificate and policy management on their platform
- Microsoft does not mandate or control the settings on PC firmware that control or enable secured boot from any operating system other than Windows
Windows 8 Platform integrity architecture
Image Credit: Microsoft Corporation
